Thursday, April 24, 2014

Oops, I'm two days late, but I have a new short story publication: Hobart, the home of my first publication last year, graciously published a new fiction installment for their annual baseball series. My piece is called "Until the Light is Off," a short about family, looming loss, and time as filtered through a batting cage. So as one typically says about a baseball story: it's about more than baseball, so if the idea of the game makes you fall asleep, I hope my piece does the opposite.

Thanks a ton to Aaron Burch (his latest story collection will be published in June) and the rest of the stellar Hobart editors and writers for giving my work a home, again. Click here for "Until the Light is Off."

I have another story being published in just under two weeks, plus I'm working on a couple book reviews that I'm hoping will be published in the not too distant future. I'm so grateful for these opportunities to create my own work and reflect on the creativity of others.

My semester is nearly finished, so, while I don't make specific promises, I'll be updating here more frequently over the summer.

Disclaimer

I started this blog in 2008. At the time, I was three years removed from an English degree, not really serious about reading or writing. Now, I have an MFA in Creative Writing, I've had some fiction published, and I have teaching experience. My relationship with literature is stronger and more nuanced.

That said, there's some pretty terrible writing here. There are many posts that I'm quite proud of, but frankly, there are ones I wouldn't want to read again. So if you're browsing, have fun! But beware of passive voice, weirdly structured reviews, and unstable opinions. I'm not at all claiming to know everything now, but I sure as hell know more than I did years ago.

An Explanation of "Chicago Ex-Patriate"

"Well, we're all born equal and anyone in Chicago can now become an expatriate without leaving town." --Nelson Algren

I've been asked more than once about it--I started this page when I moved to Washington state in 2008, intending to start a travelogue about being in a new place (it quickly morphed into a personal forum of literary essays and reviews). It was very late at night when I came up with the name (hence the typo), thinking it would be a cool spin on the literary expatriate movements of the 1920s, but then I realized it made no sense to anyone except me, and having to explain the reasoning behind an obscure title is a sign that I should have been more creative. But then I found the Nelson Algren quote featured above, so I'm sticking with that.